A key part of the human-machine interface of communication equipment involves the selection of destination addresses by the user. For example, to establish a telephone call a telephone number of the called party has to be selected and to send an e-mail an e-mail address of the destination has to be selected.
Powerful support tools have been provided in communication equipment to assist human users that do not know the necessary addresses by heart. For example, an electronic directory database may be provided, that can be queried with incomplete information about the destination. The database provides the complete address if only one address is consistent with the incomplete information, or else presents the user with a request to choose from a list of consistent addresses.
It is also known to use historical data about previously established communication links in support of address selection. Thus, for example when a user specifies an incomplete destination address the support tool may search for a matching address in a table that contains destination addresses that the user has used in earlier transmission.
Unfortunately, this type of support tool still does not handle many cases wherein the user cannot provide the address by heart. For example, it still is awkward to use “subjective” information that has meaning for a limited number of users, but not for all other users.
WO2009/064694 describes a system for enabling unacquainted persons to establish contact after their paths have crossed by chance. When a person would like to contact another person, he or she can each send a “match request” to the system via his or her mobile telephone for example. The match request contains encounter information that identifies the time and place at which their paths crossed. The system is configured to identify pairs of such match requests with correlated encounter information. The system receives match requests from large numbers of persons and searches for pairs with matching event information. If it finds such a pair, the system connects the persons, for example by connecting the mobile telephones from which the match requests of the pair were received. WO2009/064694 is only concerned with finding matching requests from pairs of persons that both try to contact each other, not with unilateral requests to address another user. Once a pair of matching requests has been confirmed, it would be contrary to the document to use these match requests to try and confirm other pairs.
The document describes the possibility that the system transmits verification questions, like “at which platform did we part?”, from one person to another, prior to establishing the connection. The answers to the verification questions help users decide whether they will accept the match. WO2009/064694 does not suggest that verification questions are used by the system itself in its initial search for pairs of match requests, let alone that the answers to the questions may be used by the system to resolve later requests. In WO2009/064694 it suffices that a person provides a verification questions after a matching person has been found, possibly dependent on the information, or lack of it, in the event information from the matching person.
US2008/0026774 describes a computer dating service that makes use of a wireless communication network. The system compares stored user profiles of users of mobiles that are present in the same network cell at the same time and when a match is found, the users are put in contact, or advised of each others presence. In this system, matching depends on information that is provided in the database before the mobiles are in the same cell.
WO 02/29636 describes a system for finding a target person on the Internet. The system uses a database with information about registered persons. A person that wishes to find a target person provides some personal on the target person and sends a request with that personal information to the system. When it receives the request, the system compares personal information with information about registered persons. When a matching candidate is found, the system sends a query to the candidate to determine whether the registered information of the candidate may be revealed to the person that submitted the request to find the target person. In this system, matching entirely depends on information in the database about registered persons.